EU Broadband Coverage Reaches 72% of Households vs 80% in the UK

The European Union (EU27) has released its latest annual ‘Internet use in households and by individuals in 2012‘ report, which found that 76% of EU households now have internet access (up from 66% in 2009) and 72% of EU homes connect via broadband (up from just 57% in 2009).

The data, which was published by the EU’s statistical office (Eurostat), also highlighted “sigificant” differences between countries. For example, several countries had household internet penetration of 90%+ (e.g. the Netherlands (94%), Luxembourg (93%) and Denmark and Sweden (both 92%)), while others had just over 50% (e.g. Bulgaria (51%), Greece and Romania (both 54%)).

Unfortunately the United Kingdom’s data, unlike all of the other countries listed, appears to be a year out of date. As a result our stats are probably slightly higher than reported. Still the UK does reasonably well. Some 83% of households now have internet access (up from 77% in 2009) and 80% are on a broadband connection (up from 69% in 2009).

Elsewhere e-mail usage, as well as finding information about goods or services, remain the most common online activities within the EU27 during 2012 (89% and 83% respectively). Meanwhile 61% said they read online news, 54% used internet banking services, 52% posted messages to social media and 50% used services related to travel.

Would be useful to know what benchmark they are using for “broadband” in this context – at EU stats level it used to be broadband if it was any speed greater than 256kbps
If this is still the hurdle then we may not have moved as far as people think

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